Chara never played against the Whalers. I was at one of his first games in North America when he took the ice against the Beast of New Haven when he played for the Lowell Lock Monsters in '98 OR '99. I remember him appearing scrawny and being a horrible skater compared to what he became. I remember being at the Flames game in March of '97. Had no recollection of seeing Iginla. I do remember that game becoming pretty chippy, the Whalers were awarded a goal that was under review and someone on Hartford got penalized for having a illegal curve on their stick. I recall them putting the stick up to a measuring device to check the angle of the curve.

TheWhaleGuy123 wrote:
> will5059 wrote:
> > Jersey is mad that people don't agree with him completely. He doesn't want
> > to debate are allow everyone to have their own opinion.
> > "Non-believers", "anti-hartford", give me a break.
> > Every opinion that doesn't match his own is met with a retarded nickname.
>
> Anyone who doesn't support the NHL or at least the XL renovation IS by *****ociation
> with what will then occur to the city "ANTI HARTFORD"
>
> It's that important to the city's **ture. Oh and yeah there are probably only 20 of
> us who think about this topic, but mark my words (no pun intended LOL) everyone and
> their cousin will claim to have been it's biggest proponent if the NHL comes back.
Yeah well just because I don't believe an NHL return is imminent and adding a second concourse and a few thousand seats when there is no lease in hand for NHL or AHL does not make me anti hartford.

Jersey is mad that people don't agree with him completely. He doesn't want to debate are allow everyone to have their own opinion. "Non-believers", "anti-hartford", give me a break. Every opinion that doesn't match his own is met with a retarded nickname.

Chad's probably right on this one. Gales idea, which we can all agree is impossible, most likely inflames the crowd that is against taxpayers building arenas for millionaire sports teams that uniting the people who would favor such a thing. Just because someone is a lawyer and a politician doesn't necessarily mean they're smart. Being a lawyer means you went to more years of school and being a politician means your a good-bull-*****ter. There's at least a reasonable chance Gale is just a moron.

The biggest problem with John Gales proposal is he's using an $230 million estimate from Forbes. They've routinely undervalued franchises lately. The ripple effect from the Clippers sale is still being given felt. The league is going to make the purchase price and relocation fee equil $500 million to justify the expansion fee and protect other franchise values. His per household number must be at least doubled. Combine that with the expected jump in property taxes to cover the states bailing on pensions and this would cause a riot. Coming from someone who doesn't live in Hartford it's offensive that the rest of the state is expected to subsidize them left and right as a result of years and years of themselves electing ineffective, incompatent local leadership.

It's worth noting that the arena management, Islanders Sports and Entertainment, did contribute substantially to the upgrades that took place 5 years ago. Re-tiled the concourse, new center ice scoreboard, new ribbon boards, painted the walls, etc.. At 20 years old I should reasonable to *****ume there is $15 million worth of work to be done. Maybe if every decade the state and/or city chips in along with the arena management we won't end up with a doomsday scenario some would belive Hartford is in. "Timmy" is trying to create a narrative that Bridgeport stands in the way of the NHL returning to Hartford. No I do not take that line of thinking seriously.

Whalevolution wrote:
> will5059 wrote:
> > The city of Bridgeport owns Webster bank arena.
>
> That's nice and I am sure the city can handle a 15M dollar upgrade with minimal state
> *****istance. but this topic isn't relative to anything I said in the previous post.
>
>
> Timmy said all this Bport stuff, so you ARE taking him seriously now?
No. You said you couldn't support the state spending money on a building that isn't publicly owned and I am just informing you that Webster Bank Arena is publicly owned. No big deal. BTW the city put out RFD's for the ballpark so there is no reason to believe any **ture project won't be at least primarily privately **nded. The arena in Bridgeport is turning 20 soon and seeing as how the state just spent $40 million on the XL Center and will most likely spend a fair amount more throwing Bridgeport a bone is not out of line.

Whalevolution wrote:
> will5059 wrote:
> > So am I still supposed to be taking Timmy from the boosters seriously or
> > not?
>
> Again I don't know anyone here who has said that they do.
>
> End of June should answer that either way though
Well there was this one time Mark said this right after Jersey asked Timmy to email him:
MarkH2919 wrote:
> Maybe it's time Will takes Timmy seriously.
It appears that Mark has seen the light and thinks Timmy is wp98. Which is what I thought from the first time I saw his posts. So me and Mark do agree on something.

$10 million sounds like a good place to start for them. The only teams that sniff $20 million are original 6 and/or top 10 market teams. TV is not where expansion teams in non-traditional markets plan on getting rich.